


smuggle ourselves into ourselves

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters: Gold Rush!AU [80]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Filler scene for dirgemaker, Flashbacks, Gen, Grief (the unprocessed kind), Terrible Coping Mechanisms, title from Siken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 10:45:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18915373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: No questions.





	smuggle ourselves into ourselves

**Author's Note:**

> “Paint ghosts over everything, the sadness of everything. We made ourselves cold. We made ourselves snow. We smuggled ourselves into ourselves. Haunted by each other’s knowledge. To hide somewhere is not surrender, it is trickery. All day the snow falls down, all night the snow. I try to guess your trajectory and end up telling my own story. We left footprints in the slush of ourselves, getting out of there.” 
> 
> \- Richard Siken

_You have not given_

_one_

_single_

_thought_

_to his face._

_(You have only seen it painted under your eyelids, all permanence and all you, and that is not the same as_ thinking _.)_

_(It's not.)_

 

"Let me," Curufin says, and from the basin of boiled lake water, long cooled, he draws a drenched rag towards Celegorm's cheek.

Celegorm _flinches_ , like the touch will burn him.

"No."

He does not sound like Celegorm.

He is shaking, which makes him like Maedhros, and Curufin does not want that. Curufin shuts his eyes, and opens them.

Until now, Celegorm has never looked like anyone other than himself.

"Let me." And his voice is harder now, hard in the way that makes Maglor grimace. Hard in a way that rings like a hammer on metal ( _do you think the_ hammer _aches?_ )

Celegorm sets his jaw. Curufin washes his brother's face.

Mud--river mud. Why did Celegorm go to a river?

 

 _Twins are bad. Hansel and Gretel--who Mamaí says are twins--are good and smart, since they burned the witch in her own oven. But the twins Curufin knows are not like that at all. Since they have learned to walk, they have gotten into_ everything _. They tried to eat Curufin's acorn collection. They stole his place on Athair's hip. Maglor said Curufin was too heavy to hold, and Maedhros did not reach for him much anymore since Curufin bit his ear._

_Curufin sits under the shadows of a crabapple, scowling. He is all alone today; Maglor and Maedhros are visiting Grandfather Finwe, and Athair and Mamaí are napping together in their room. Celegorm is supposed to be minding his brothers, Curufin and the twins, but he and Caranthir have snuck away to chase frogs in the creek. The twins do not count, as...companions. That is the word Mamaí uses for what brothers should be._

_A little ways away from Curufin's tree, the twins are in their fenced-in pen. They waddle, still in diapers, for all that they are two._

_Curufin remembers being two, and_ he _was in dresses then. The twins ought to be, but they soil all their clothes at once with food and dirt and things much worse than that._

_Curufin wrinkles his nose._

_Amras bumps into Amrod, and Amrod falls. They both squwak._

_Curufin unfolds himself, coming close._

_They look very pink and helpless, like the mice children Celegorm rescued from the barn last night, before Athair could take a hoe to them. They also look like Baby Moses, in Mamaí's picture Bible._

 

The mud is gone from Celegorm's face. His hair is in scarecrow tatters, but Curufin only pushes it back with both hands. "Why did you do it?" he asks, and lets his voice go quiet again, nothing more but a drop of water in a pool he cannot see. "Why did you think you could save--"

" _Don't_ ," Celegorm whispers, and his face screws up like the flesh rebels against the bones that give it shape. "Curufin, don't ask. Don't ask. God almighty, don't _ask_."

_But if God is almighty..._

Curufin knows Celegorm. Knows him well enough to know that this--hands on the side of his face, forehead to forehead, _steady, steady_ , "Breathe," Curufin says. It is advice he has not taken himself. Advice he will not--

 

_You are alone down here and you are going to be alone down here forever._

_But at least this half, this heart, belonged to you anyway._

 

"I couldn't, I couldn't," Celegorm stutters, his breath hot on Curufin's face, and Curufin stays like that. Doesn't let him go.

_Don’t go. Can’t be—can’t be _here_ without—_

Quiet. It is all very quiet. They are in Curufin's room, but they might as well be in the mine. Curufin eases back, their foreheads no longer touching.

"Couldn't?" he asks (a question).

"They were gone," Celegorm says. "They were gone." His voice is not even like a voice, and Curufin knows what that is like.

"We'll kill them," he promises gently. "We'll kill all of them."

 

_"So then," Curufin whispers, mouth almost pressed against his clasped hands, "I found the apple baskets, and I put blankets in them"--this detail seems important--"and I opened the fence."_

_Father Llewellyn clears his throat. "The fence?"_

_"Yes. The twins' fence."_

_"Ah. Go on."_

_"I got them to follow me to the creek..." Curufin takes a deep breath, remembering. They had taken a long time to follow him, with those chubby legs. And that wasn't fair, for they had been walking for many months and could run swiftly when they wanted to. Curufin has seen them chased enough times to know. He chirped to them like Mother did to her chickens._

_"Oofin," said Amras._

_That was how they said his name._

_"Anyway," Curufin says, before Father Llewellyn becomes impatient as Mother and Maglor sometimes do, "I put them in the baskets. But they didn't float."_

_Father Llewellyn does not gasp, which is rather disappointing, though Curufin supposes he must know that the twins are still here._

 

"You can stay here as long as you like," Curufin offers. Before, Celegorm wanted to stay with Maedhros and Maglor, in their narrow room, but he was rejected as a suitable sleepmate. Such is their way.

"I can't stay anywhere," Celegorm chokes, and he stumbles as he stands, and Curufin helps him down, down to the floor, so that they sit cross-legged and facing each other, and Curufin has so much to ask but he _won't ask it_.

 

_The face inside your eyes when you shut them--it's Athair's face. But you're not thinking it._

 

"We must be strong," Curufin urges. He has been here for the last lonely days with the beautiful darkness of the mine around him, with things twinkling, gems and not-gems. Above him, Maglor paced and wrung his hands. Above him, Maglor believed he was--but Maglor is weak, like the crown of a young tree.

Celegorm has never needed to be anyone else but Celegorm.

"I failed him," Celegorm says. "And he--"

"And he could not save Amrod, could he?" Curufin demands sharply, and Amrod's name slits his tongue in twin halves, doesn't it? _Doesn't it?_

"Gone." Celegorm shuts his eyes, and tears spill out over his clean-scrubbed cheeks. "I..."

 

_They mewed like kittens as the baskets sank and their diapers were soaked, and Curufin was very--worried, suddenly, like a mother hen might be. He tried to chirp again, but they could not get out of the baskets. The water was as deep as Curufin's knees._

_It was also very cold._

_"I got them out," Curufin says. "And they don't remember it, now."_

_"It's easy to be jealous of younger brothers," Father Llewellyn observes._

_Curufin finds he does not like the word. When the priest asks,_ are these all your sins _, he thinks of locking the door against Cousin Argon's wails, and says--_

_"Yes."_

 

Huan is outside the door, whining. Celegorm does not whistle, does not move to let him in. What does this mean? Curufin finds himself fascinated again by the mud, now tangled in his brother's hair--river mud, river mud.

"How far did you ride?"

Celegorm's eyes flare, blue-grey-haunted-not-like-Ath--

"Curufin."

"Aye. No questions."

Celegorm's face is swollen, and red. Burned and roughened. Still capable of being beautiful, because that is their family. That is...

... _his_ work.

Curufin leans his elbows on his knees, props his chin in his hands. Does not think of what _dead_ means, for Maedhros or--Amrod, or anyone.

Curufin says, "We have no friends here. You know that, don't you?"

Celegorm, with something grinding in his jaw, nods.

"We have each other." Curufin could mean _all of us_ , but he doesn't.

He never has.

"We have each other," Celegorm echoes dully, looking younger than nineteen. Young enough to follow where he is led. Curufin's chest aches. Love and bullets will do that to the ribs of anyone.

"Promise me." It is his turn to whisper. "Whatever happens, promise me you will not forget that."


End file.
